Tax codes are moral issue,
United Methodists say
A UMNS Report
By Linda Bloom
United Methodists want to start a moral discussion about state tax codes, a church executive told MSNBC viewers during a Dec. 15 news segment.
John Hill, an executive with the United Methodist Board of Church and Society, said the denomination is urging a look at state funding priorities, how revenue is raised "and whether that is, in fact, done in a fair way."
The six-minute segment, featuring Hill and Tim Kane, an economist with the Heritage Foundation, was part of the network's coverage of the two-day White House Conference on the Economy at the Ronald Reagan Center in Washington.
Last May, the 2004 United Methodist General Conference, the denomination's top legislative body, passed a resolution calling upon each annual (regional) conference of the church to set up a state taxation task force to examine the tax codes of its state. The task force would then prepare a strategy to promote a just tax code.
Such action already has occurred in Alabama, where Susan Pace Hamill, a United Methodist lay person and law professor, documented that the state's tax code was oppressive to poor families and failed to raise adequate revenue for basic services. Her book on the subject is "The Least of These (Fair Taxes and the Moral Duty of Christians)."
The denomination's North Alabama and Alabama- West Florida conferences both organized to work for reforming the state tax code.
In Alabama, Hill explained, the tax code "disproportionately taxed the poor. It taxed baby food but not chicken feed."
Using the church's efforts in Alabama as an example, he added: "We're asking United Methodists around the country to do similar work.
"Certainly our faith teaches us that we are supposed to treat those who have the least in our society with fairness, with justice, to make sure that their needs are met."
Kane said his foundation agrees with the principle of fighting poverty but disagrees with the "liberal" view of how to do it.
"If we treated everyone equally with the tax code - one rate, no deductions " that would be a far superior system that would treat everyone equally with dignity," he noted.
Kane believes the tax code already is progressive and said that "the call to do more for the poor" often masks a move toward bigger government. Hill pointed out that there is no "predetermined outcome" for the church's discussion about tax codes.
"What we're asking is for folks to begin a conversation," he said. "We believe that the budget and the tax system is a moral document, that it, in essence, determines what and, more importantly, who we value in society."
Bloom is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in New York.
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